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Gawker sues State Department for Hillary aide's emails

By Dylan Byers

03/13/15 03:32 PM EDT

Gawker Media has filed a Freedom of Information Act complaint against the State Department in an attempt to force the release of private email correspondence between former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Philippe Reines and members of the news media.

The lawsuit comes two days after the Associated Press filed a similar motion to force the release of Hillary Clinton's private emails during her tenure as Secretary of State. The State Department has so far declined comment on both lawsuits.

In a report announcing the lawsuit, Gawker editor John Cook said the outlet had previously filed a request for Reines' email exchanges with reporters in 2012. At the time, State claimed that it didn't have any such emails, which Cook called preposterous, "given the fact that Reines' job was to correspond with reporters and that one of those exchanges were already on the internet."

"We did appeal that denial, and State has been purportedly searching for those emails for more than a year. It has not produced them," Cook wrote on Friday. "The fact that we have appealed and that State has long missed the statutory deadline for responding to our request means that our request is ripe for a lawsuit, and with the help of Washington, D.C., FOIA attorneys Mark Zaid and Bradley Moss, we did so today."

In emails to Cook and several other media reporters last week, Reines sought to distance himself from the FOIA request, writing, "You have to ask State about your requests, appeals, etc."